Misadventures of the most favored nations: clashing egos, inflated ambitions, and the great shambles of the world trade system

361 Pages·2009·1.32 MB·English

by  Paul Blustein

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MISADVENTURES
OF THE MOST
FAVORED NATIONS
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ALSO BY PAUL BLUSTEIN
The Chastening
And the Money Kept Rolling In (And Out)
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MISADVENTURES
OF THE MOST
FAVORED NATIONS
Clashing Egos,
Inflated Ambitions,
and the Great Shambles
of the World Trade System
PAUL BLUSTEIN
New York
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Copyright © 2009 by Paul Blustein.
Published in the United States by PublicAffairs™,
a member of the Perseus Books Group.
All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America.
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Designed by Brent Wilcox
Text set in 10.75 point Simoncini Garamond
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Blustein, Paul.
Misadventures of the most favored nations / Paul Blustein.—1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978–1-58648–718–8 (hbk. : alk. paper)
1. World Trade Organization. 2. International trade. 3. Commercial treaties.
4. International economic relations. I. Title.
HF1385.B58 2009
382’.92—dc22
2009014881
First Edition
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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To Yoshie
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CONTENTS
AUTHOR’S NOTE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ix
1 | Paging Mr. Black 1
2 | The Intergalactic Trade Organization 17
3 | The WTO and Its Discontents 41
4 | Clueless in Seattle 57
5 | “There Are Only A-Pluses” 83
6 | Removing the Stain 109
7 | The Uprising of the Rest 131
8 | Jewels and Pirates 157
9 | His Holiness, Pope Bob 173
10 | One Chicken McNugget 199
11 | When Peter Met Susan 223
12 | Even the Loopholes Have Got Loopholes 247
13 | Losing It 261
14 | If Only There Were a Better Way 277
NOTES 297
INDEX 327
vii
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AUTHOR’S NOTE AND
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Having written two books about the International Monetary Fund, and now
this one about the World Trade Organization, I suppose I can lay claim to
being the world’s foremost author of behind-the-scenes accounts about
vaguely sinister international economic institutions with three initials. This spe-
cialty, I’ll admit, is an acquired taste. But in the process of covering trade as
part of my beat at the Washington Post, I became increasingly convinced that
the WTO, like the IMF, is a tremendously important institution deserving of
thorough journalistic dissection, and that behind the Doha Round’s ups and
downs lay many dramas of both individual and collective significance. In ad-
dition, I realized that the WTO offers an ideal prism through which to illumi-
nate many of the pluses and minuses of globalization, as the trade body is
arguably the most essential element in the glue that holds the globalized econ-
omy together. So when the Post offered a generous buyout in 2006 to senior
staff members, I accepted and began work on this book as journalist in resi-
dence in the Global Economy and Development Program at the Brookings In-
stitution, at the gracious invitation of Lael Brainard, the program’s director.
Except for Antarctica, which has yet to emerge as a major power in the
WTO, I traveled to all the world’s continents in the process of gathering mate-
rial for the book. Along the way, I benefited enormously from the kindness of
friends, strangers, and sources who helped make my journeys both productive
and memorable.
A few examples: In my efforts to gain the perspective of French farmers, I
stayed with my old friend Blair Pethel, who has chucked journalism to start a
new and amazing life as a vintner in Burgundy. Not only did Blair put me up at
his wondrous seventeenth-century home in the town of Beaune, but he also
arranged interviews with his farmer neighbors and interpreted for me as well.
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